[Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex] Azar oversaw as HHS secretary, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, wouldn’t come up with viable tests for five and half weeks, even as other countries and the World Health Organization had already prepared their own.

Shortly after his televised comments, Azar tapped a trusted aide with minimal public health experience to lead the agency’s day-to-day response to COVID-19. The aide, Brian Harrison, had joined the department after running a dog-breeding business for six years. Five sources say some officials in the White House derisively called him “the dog breeder.”

I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. I have studied it better than anybody else. Its very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly. Very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous if you are into this tremendous fumes. Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world right?

So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint fumes are spewing into the air. Right? Spewing. Whether its in China, Germany, its going into the air. Its our air their air everything right?

A windmill will kill many bald eagles. After a certain number they make you turn the windmill off. That is true. By the way they make you turn it off. And yet, if you killed one they put you in jail. That is OK.

You want to see a bird graveyard? You just go. Take a look. A bird graveyard. Go under a windmill someday, youll see more birds than youve ever seen in your life.

~ Donald Trump 12/21/2019

Corruption in the Interior Department “The extractive industries have a history of deliberately concealing the value of oil and gas extracted from public lands, with the apparent intent of underpaying royalties to the federal government. In addition, these industries have benefited for far too long from the federal government’s continued failure to collect billions of dollars in owed revenue from natural resource leases. Numerous high-level officials at the Interior Department have conflicts of interest, from recent employment in or lobbying for the industry they now regulate, to continued contact with former clients on policy matters they should recuse themselves from working on. At the top of the list is Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who has an “unprecedented” level of connectedness to the industry.”

Throughout January, as Mr. Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action.

The president, though, was slow to absorb the scale of the risk and to act accordingly, focusing instead on controlling the message, protecting gains in the economy and batting away warnings from senior officials. It was a problem, he said, that had come out of nowhere and could not have been foreseen.

The Coronavirus Hoax “People should ask themselves whether this coronavirus “pandemic” could be a big hoax, with the actual danger of the disease massively exaggerated by those who seek to profit – financially or politically – from the ensuing panic.” — libertarian Ron Paul

‘Freedom payments?’ The coronavirus exposes the fraud of the anti-government movement. “The stated premise of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was to goose the economy, which it didn’t do (annual growth was exactly the same in the two years prior to passage as in the two years after — 2.4%). So it didn’t make America stronger. What it did was weaken the federal government, by looting the treasury to feather the nests mostly of corporations and the already rich. This withering of the government has always been part of the point. But where are the adherents of this now — now that we’re in trouble? They’re clamoring for their own freedom payments.” To bailout corporations and Wall Street.

Bryan Lanza, who worked for the Trump campaign in 2016 and remains a White House surrogate, told me flatly that he sees no possibility of Americans establishing a common set of facts from which to conduct the big debates of this yearÆs election. Nor is that his goal. ôItÆs our job to sell our narrative louder than the media,ö Lanza said.

How ‘Lock Her Up!’ just blew up Another useless GOP investigation turns up a big fat nothing burger. This makes three now, that have amounted to nothing. Meanwhile, Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election led to 199 criminal counts against 37 people and entities. Seven people pleaded guilty; six were sentenced to prison.

I never understood wind. I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody. I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous – if you are into this – tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right spewing, whether it is China or Germany, is going into the air.

Between 1985 and 1994, the Times story says, TrumpÆs core businesses lost money every single year, and the accumulated losses came to more than a billion dollars. ôIn fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, the Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners,ö Buettner and Craig write. ôHis core business losses in 1990 and 1991ùmore than $250 million each yearùwere more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.ö

Trump sought to allay fears about his health during his presidential campaign, releasing a letter from his long-time personal doctorùDr. Harold Bornsteinùwhich lauded Trump’s “astonishingly excellent” condition and claimed he would “unequivocally” be the healthiest president in history. Bornstein has since told NBC News that the president wrote the letter himself. In 2017, Bornstein also claimed that Trump aides turned up unannounced at his office and removed files relating to the president. (source)

How the GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act benefits mostly the rich “This page includes estimates of TCJAÆs effects in 2020. Most of the lawÆs benefits will go to the richest fifth of Americans, and a significant portion will go to foreign investors who own stocks in American companies and, therefore, benefit from the corporate tax cuts.”

Time: æWe Are Being Eaten From Within.Æ Why America Is Losing the Battle Against White Nationalist Terrorism “In more than a dozen interviews with TIME, current and former federal law-enforcement and national-security officials described a sense of bewilderment and frustration as they watched warnings go ignored and the white-supremacist terror threat grow. Over the past decade, multiple attempts to refocus federal resources on the issue have been thwarted. Entire offices meant to coordinate an interagency response to right-wing extremism were funded, staffed and then defunded in the face of legal, constitutional and political concerns.”

The Trump Tax Cuts Worked (As a Scam) By Eric Levitz “In May, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) found no sign that the Trump tax cuts made any discernible contribution to growth, wages, or business investment. Corporations did not plow their windfalls into exceptionally productive and innovative ventures. Instead, they mostly threw their handouts onto the giant pile of cash they were already sitting on, and/or returned it to their (predominantly rich) shareholders.”

Forbes: The 2017 Tax Cuts Didn’t Work, The Data Prove It: “Investment did not boom and workers will not see the promised bump in pay. The richest Americans instead got even richer while corporations used a lot of the new money to keep shareholders happy.”

DeVos Repeals Obama-Era Rule Cracking Down on For-Profit Colleges “Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Friday officially repealed an Obama-era regulation that sought to crack down on for-profit colleges and universities that produced graduates with no meaningful job prospects and mountains of student debt they could not hope to repay.”

If the U.S. government’s claims that Iran was behind the tanker attack are true, 47 percent of U.S. adults would somewhat or strongly support military action while 31 percent would be somewhat or strongly opposed. Unsurprisingly, the polling uncovered a deep partisan divide with 77 percent of Republicans backing a military strike compared to just 31 percent of Democrats.

While most respondents overall opposed military action against North Korea, the “majority of Trump supporters prefer the US strike in every scenario, except when confidence in the effectiveness of the US conventional strike is 50 percent”ùand even then it remained at 44 percent as opposed to a mere 8 percent for non-supporters. Separately, those who backed the death penalty were actually more eager to inflict a higher death toll among North Korean civilians.

“In 2016, when he was running for President, USA Today found that [Trump] had been involved in thirty-five hundred lawsuits, and was the plaintiff in nearly two thousand of them.” (The New Yorker, May 13, 2019)